Tuesday, January 11, 2011

I recently ordered an 11 inch MacBook Air. The machine uses flash memory for storage - there is no mechanical hard drive which makes it a lot thinner, lighter and quicker. It also makes the battery last longer. The optical drive (also mechanical) is also missing. If I need one of those I can purchase an external drive or share a drive on another machine.

This configuration certainly has me thinking. I remember buying a 10MB hard drive before I got married in 1985 for over $1000, figuring I would have enough storage to last me through the end of the millennium. So much for that theory - I think I upgraded to a 20MB drive the following year. I’m now pretty sure my mechanical drive purchases in end-devices (laptops, tablets, etc) are over though and think this theory will hold, much like my move away from desktop machines. I gave up on desktop computers a few years ago and now run off a primary notebook that I attach to a mouse, keyboard and large monitor in my office. Very nice. I will likely continue to purchase external mechanical hard drives for backups for the next couple of years.As far as optical computer disks go - I rarely use them and can’t remember the last time I purchased one. Apple just launched their Mac App Store and we’re going to see an explosion of all kinds of App stores, Software As A Service (SAAS), etc this year. This is likely the way I’ll be purchasing my Apps. It's the way I prefer to purchase them actually.Blue-ray movie discs are a different story of course - at least for the time being.

In 2001, I was selected as one of the top 15 STEM faculty in the United States by Microsoft and the American Association of Community Colleges and in 2004 was selected as the Massachusetts Network and Communications Council Workforce Leader of the year.